infonet-economy

Previous research studied the impact of online social cues
(i.e., references on websites to persons or social situations)
on website perceptions. Here, we study whether online
social cues may additionally create a spillover to the
physical channel. We propose that online social cues
on the website attributed to service employees can
strengthen perceived service quality of service employees,
and that the strength of this effect is determined by media
richness. We test our predictions with multisource data
from a sample of 113 service firms, including two samples
of customers for each of the firms. We find that the effects
of online social cues of service employees are strengthened
by the use of rich media, and that online social
cues increase customer loyalty through service quality
perceptions of service employees but not through service
quality perceptions of the website. Thus, the effects of
online social cues are underestimated if their spillover to
physical channels is neglected.